


#0101611 Human Insignificance

by SurpassTheStars



Series: MAGtober 2020 [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: I wrote this at like 12 am I don’t know, MAGtober, Minor Character Death, Statement, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Vast (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, [sweats] better late than never?, day 1 prompt: statement, haha avatarsona go brrr, i guess?, tagging is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26853799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SurpassTheStars/pseuds/SurpassTheStars
Summary: Statement of Elliot– the last name was scratched off– regarding human insignificance and the ocean. Original statement given 16th of November, 2010. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist at the magnus institute, London.
Series: MAGtober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1958977
Kudos: 2





	#0101611 Human Insignificance

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings! mentions of drowning, talk of human Insignificance(?), mention of funerals, I think that’s all

Jonathan Sims, the head archivist, groans into his hands out of frustration. This was the fourth statement in a row that refused to record digitally and he is going to be forced to use that cursed old tape recorder he so heavily despised.

Begrudgingly, he opened his desk drawer and fished out one of the tape recorders that were crammed here for some reason he didn’t know. Clearing his throat and sitting up straight, he turned on the recorder with a click.

“Statement of Elliot– the last name was scratched off– regarding human insignificance and the ocean. Original statement given 16th of November, 2010. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist at The Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

“Has it ever occurred to you how small we really are? Humans always talk about ‘the huge effect we will leave on this earth’ but we ourselves are small. Have you seen the earth from a spacecraft? It looks microscopic from up there, humans are much smaller than the earth.

People are afraid of insignificance, though it is comforting to me. Why would you want to put yourself in the spotlight? Why make yourself bigger than you actually are? When you believe you are significant you take on things that are much bigger than you and it’s not fun getting crushed.

I never knew people were afraid of being insignificant until I met Glenn Lybeck. They were a Norwegian sailor, a friend of a friend who almost let themselves be forgotten before we met. I was never a fan of people myself, but Glenn was good company.

They invited me on a trip one day, somewhere between our meeting and them asking me out on a date. I turned them down, of course, I wasn’t one to get romantically involved. ‘Just a small trip down Norway!’ They had pitched the idea, ‘won’t take longer than a week or so’ I agreed after a while.

I grew up in a small seaside village so visited the ocean a lot as a kid, that early morning the ocean greeted me like an old friend as I stepped on that boat and I knew our plans would be derailed.

Glenn hugged me when they saw I had arrived, laughing lightly before declaring ‘Norway! I’m coming home!’ I gave a small smile as they squeezed my shoulder and went to go steer the ship, we wouldn’t be arriving in Norway anytime soon.

Glenn had a peculiar fear of open space, they had once told me nearly drunk that it freaked them out to put into perspective just how small they are next to the world, a rather obvious lie but i let it slide, instead I asked why they became a sailor then but they just shook their head before changing the subject.

The ship’s crew was small, though most of them were tainted and marked much to my distaste. I didn’t attempt to talk to any of them.

We set out in calm waters, when we were a bit ways out of the pier I overheard one of the crew loudly proclaiming that this would be their easiest sail yet but as I looked at the water from where I was leaning against the taffrail, the ocean gleamed and I had a feeling it wouldn’t stay like that for long.

The trip length was an estimated two to four days, but we hit a roadblock half way through our third day. There was a storm that was brewing, we expected it to pass over us but we ended up in the middle of it. The seas quickly got rough and Glenn and their crew struggled to get up out of it.

It’s rather peculiar, no? How humans always try and gloat how they have created technology that can predict things that could happen before they do. Before we left on that ship we had checked the weather forecast multiple times before the trip, sunny skies with a slight chance of clouds, but we still ended up in the middle of a storm.

Water crashed up into the deck, and the boat swayed to the song of the ocean. The water was dark and didn’t hold any of its previous bright glimmer. The ocean had come to collect what was its and I let it, after all I knew better than to try to play the bigger person.

Glenn’s ship sank and the storm cleared up soon after, lucky for us there was another ship that saw us and rescued as many people as it could. Glenn drowned, no one managed to recover a body.

Their funeral was quiet, a small thing with an empty coffin to hide the lack of body, their family came to mourn as did their friends. The seats were still half empty, not many knew them well enough to come say their goodbyes.

Glenn, in some ways, was rather insignificant to the world.

Statement ends.”

He sighed and rubbed his face before continuing. “Right so. I had Sasha look into Glenn Lybeck, and they had died on the 7th of June in 2009 cause of death was drowning. Their ship, however, washed up back in England nearly four months after with the body of Mx Lybeck. As for the ‘Elliot’ Tim couldn’t find anything on them, despite going as far as searching for other crew members on Lybeck’s ship but none of them were willing to give any statement or saying anything that would give us clues to who Elliot is.

Sasha had gone through records of shipwrecks during 2008 coming up with one ‘Elliot Yousuf’ however they had gone missing in 2012 after an unspecified incident. I am starting to notice a pattern with these ocean based statements however I’m hesitant to believe they link with each other at all, another thing is that Elliot had mentioned Lybeck’s crew were ‘tainted and marked’ by what exactly? I do not know. This is another dead end statement with no way for us to get any following statements, not that I expected any different.

End recording.”


End file.
